


The Polycule Job

by knight_bus_of_doom



Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot is a soft murder boy and I adore him, F/M, M/M, Multi, OT3, get-together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_bus_of_doom/pseuds/knight_bus_of_doom
Summary: The kitchen staff of a microbrewery in Portland, know as the home base of Leverage Inc. to probably more people than should know, gathered in a corner of the pantry. Some sort of argument had begun a few minutes ago between two of them, but now the rest of the staff had apparently been roped into the debate."They're all dating, obviously."“They’renotall dating.”
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford
Comments: 38
Kudos: 467





	The Polycule Job

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been brought to you by: Nyquil. _You can't sneeze if you're unconscious!_

The kitchen staff of a microbrewery in Portland, know as the home base of Leverage Inc. to probably more people than should know, gathered in a corner of the pantry. Some sort of argument had begun a few minutes ago between two of them, but now the rest of the staff had apparently been roped into the debate.

“Milly, why are we _in_ here?”

“You’re here to settle a debate,” Milly told whoever had asked that question, not really bothering to check who it was. She turned back to her _supposed_ best friend. “I can’t believe you! I thought we were on the same page with this.”

Sara, the aformentioned best friend, threw up her hands. “You act like I slept with someone you’ve dated, or liked one of Joey’s posts on Instagram.”

“Hey, we don’t bring up Joey, c’mon,” Ben chimed in.

“Oh, you didn’t even know Joey,” Sara said scathingly.

“Hey! What’s the debate? I have a whole bowl of cauliflower hearts out there, and if they aren’t sliced perfectly the boss-man is gonna have my head.”

This time, Milly looked around to see who had spoken. “It’s all very simple, Liv.”

“It’s not _simple_ ,” Sara protested. “It’s about the bosses.”

“What, all of them?” Ben asked.

“Yes, all of them, all five.”

“Were you trying to figure out what they do for a living?” Liv asked.

“Yeah, this place doesn’t make nearly enough money for everything we have here. There’s gold leaf china in the back cupboard, for God’s sake!”

“No, no, that’s obvious,” Milly said, waving away the absurdity with a hand. “They’re mobsters.”

“Secret agents.”

“Circus performers.”

“Religious fanatics with a big inheritance.”

Milly looked around at her coworkers, who had all answered at the same time. She paused, then went on. “Anyway, that’s not important. It’s not about what they do, it’s about _who_ they do.”

Sara burst into laughter. “Honestly, Mils. Plus, the question wasn’t who was sleeping together, it’s who was together. Dating. In a relationship.”

“Exactly,” Milly said, pointing at her friend and turning to their captive audience. “They’re all dating, obviously.”

“They’re _not_ all dating,” Sara said in exasperation.

“You want us to break the tie?” Liv asked, raising their eyebrows at the ridiculousness of what they were apparently involved in.

“Wait, but what if each of us agrees with one of you?” Ben asked.

Milly threw her hands up. “Then we’ll find a fifth person! We’ll go get Michael from behind the bar.”

“Or Joey,” Liv offered, smiling wickedly.

Milly pointed at them threateningly and then relented. “So? What do you think? Who’s right?”

“Well… Mr. Ford and Ms. Devereaux are together,” Ben ventured.

“Oh, well done,” Liv said sarcastically. “Was it the fact that she wanders down here at 3am in his garish shirts to get champagne and strawberries that tipped you off?”

“Or maybe that time they had really loud sex in here during the lunch rush,” Sara said, grinning.

Ben quickly stopped leaning against a nearby shelf and looked around the small pantry accusingly. “You never told me that!”

“Obviously those two are dating, or boinking, or… something,” Liv said, really thinking about it now. “Hardison and Parker have movie nights all the time, she comes down here to get popcorn.”

“No, Hardison and Chef Eliot are dating, I’m pretty sure,” Sara said. “Have you seen the way they argue? It’s intense.”

“But what about Chef Eliot and Ms. Devereaux? They’ve walked out of here dressed to the nines more times than I can count.”

“And Chef Eliot and Parker are always doing that karate training or whatever in the back room, and do you remember the one time someone insulted her? He got _so_ mad.”

Milly pointed at all of their points as they were made. “Exactly. Easiest solution: they’re all dating.”

“They can’t _all_ be dating,” Ben said.

“Well, maybe not like, each of them is dating every other person, but it’s definitely some sort of polycule thing,” Milly conceded.

“They can’t all be dating!” Ben insisted.

“Why not?” Liv asked, and Milly crowed in success. “No, I’m not saying I agree, hold on, that was not my final answer!”

“Because…” Ben struggled for an answer. “Because the odds are just astronomical, that’s why! Honestly, five people that are _that_ different, all in some huge relationship?”

“Why else would they live together?”

Silence as they all tried to come up with a reason.

“Okay, well, we just have to ask one of them,” Liv decided. “Because this is just going to drive me crazy.”

“This hasn’t driven you crazy before now?” Milly asked them.

“No, because I don’t speculate about the love lives of my bosses! I don’t speculate about anything, really, this job pays _way_ too well.”

“Which one of them do we ask?” Ben said. “And I say we but I’m totally not going to ask any of them.”

“Not Ms. Devereaux, we’d never know if she was lying.”

Sara nodded. “You’re right. Mr. Ford?”

Liv laughed. “If there was anyone who’d have _less_ of a chance of knowing what was going on than us, it’s Mr. Ford. Man’s oblivious.”

“True,” Milly said, thinking. “We can’t ask Parker, she’d either disappear or get...scary.”

“And Hardison doesn’t know any of us, he’s never down here.”

“What does he eat, anyway?”

“I saw him once with a bag of groceries. It was literally just chips and orange soda.”

“How is he not dead?” Ben asked the world at large.

“So then it has to be Chef Eliot,” Liv said. 

“No, no way, he’s scarier than Parker is,” Ben complained. “He does those knife tricks and I fight the urge to duck behind something for cover.”

“Excellent survival instinct, Benny,” Milly complimented, patting him on the back. “So we just need to send someone he can’t murder for asking, right?” She paused as everyone looked at her. “Oh, no. No way.”

“You started this,” Liv pointed out.

“He always says you’re the only one who can make a decent bechamel sauce,” Sara said.

They all stared at her for a moment more, and she threw up her hands. “Fine! Fine. But you’re each covering one of my shifts in the future, no questions asked.”

“Done,” they chorused.

She turned and walked out of the pantry, a woman on a mission, and pretended she didn’t hear Liv say, “He’s totally gonna kill her.”

Luckily, or maybe not so luckily, Chef Eliot walked into the kitchen a few minutes after they had all returned to their stations, surveying quickly before walking to the bread station and grabbing a bowl of risen dough. Figuring this was a good chance to catch him without anything metal or sharp in his hands, Milly walked over to him. As she approached him, she heard everything else in the room get quieter as everyone strained to hear.

“Chef Eliot?” she ventured nervously.

“Yes?” he replied, gruffly, although that was sort of his default.

“I had a question to ask you,” she said, and then gathered all her courage and just went for it. “It’s kind of personal, and I apologize in advance, but we--I was really wondering, and I just... are you and the others dating?”

He turned slowly to look at her, eyebrows drawn together in either complete confusion or murderous rage. His eyes flicked behind her at the rest of the kitchen, and suddenly the banging of pots and pans was deafening as everyone made as much noise as possible. Busy working, don’t look at us! She gulped.

“What?” he said finally.

“You and… the others. You know, Mr. Ford, Ms. Deveraux, Hardison, Parker…” she trailed off.

His brain seemed to have trouble computing, and when he finally said something, it seemed unrelated. “Why do Nate and Sophie have titles, but not the other two?”

She shrugged, glad he seemed calm. “We started off calling them all Mr. or Ms, and then Parker and Hardison each asked us to stop, but the other two never did.”

He nodded, seeming deep in thought. “You thought we were all dating?” he asked, still seeming confused more than anything else.

Her shoulders fell. That was her theory shot. “Well, Mr. Ford and Ms. Deveraux, but _you_ and Ms. Deveraux, but you and Hardison, but Hardison and Parker, but you and Parker…”

He honestly seemed flabbergasted, enough that what came next sounded like total honesty. “Sophie and Nate are… Sophie and Nate, and Hardison and Parker are dating, what in the world… I’m not involved with any of them!” He began kneading the dough more roughly, thinking rapidly, and turned to her. “What in the world made you think I was involved with any of them? I don’t… I… damn it, this is the problem with people in our space, y’all think too damn much.” He kept grumbling and kneading.

Milly wasn’t sure if the conversation was over but figured this was possibly her only chance to get some mysteries cleared up. “We see you and Ms. Devereaux going out all the time, matching like you’re going somewhere fancy.”

“Iden--” he cut himself off. “Costumes. We...both like the opera, and Nate hates it, so I go with her.”

Alright. Obviously a lie, but he seemed so uncomfortable and confused that it was probably a cover for something similar. Was he going to say identification? Were they actually secret agents? Oh, she hated when Liv guessed right, they were unbearable.

“What about Hardison, and Parker?” he asked, and there was something about his voice that made her smile. Was he… hopeful?

“You and Hardison… argue all the time,” she said, trying to explain this as best she could. “Intensely.”

“We argue?” he grumbled, still facing away from you.

“Yeah, but you don’t argue like that with the rest of them, and he doesn’t really either. Plus, there’s the restaurant. When I signed my contract, his name was on it, so didn’t he buy it?”

Chef Eliot nodded, one sharp movement.

“Right, so he bought a restaurant that he absolutely can’t run…” Milly paused, trying to catch up to her train of thought. “...and you’re a chef!”

He looked at her from underneath his brows. “Yes, and?”

“He basically bought it for you to run it, didn’t he?” she said, excited now. “And it doesn’t make that much money, I can tell, so he didn’t do it for financial reasons. And _Parker_..” she trailed off, organizing her thoughts. “I don’t know, you two seem really protective of each other sometimes. And she’s always coming down for karate lessons--”

“Krav Maga,” he interjected.

“Krav Maga lessons, cooking lessons, and she actually pays attention to you and stays still. Sometimes she’s not patient enough to wait for the whole bag of popcorn to pop, but she’ll stay in here for like an hour listening to prattle on about knives.”

He shot her a look.

“Give helpful information about knives. Sir,” she added. That had been a lot of information, and she was probably too invested in her boss's love lives, Liv was right. But what else was there to do around here than wonder about the mysteries that lived upstairs? A girl had to have hobbies.

He stood there, kneading, for a few more minutes, and she began wondering if she should just leave and pretend this conversation had never happened. It was probably safest. Just as she was turning to go, he stopped kneading, abruptly, and scraped the dough off his hands. He turned around and startled when he saw her. He never startled.

“Going upstairs,” he said, looking skittish. Then he pointed at the dough. “Finish this.”

She nodded and watched him disappear up the back stairs, then felt the other three crowd around her.

“Well?” Sara asked, and she could almost feel Ben vibrating with curiosity.

“They’re not all dating,” she said simply.

“Yes!” Sara cheered, then turned back to her. “You were talking to him way longer than that, I saw you. What’s going on?”

“I’m not actually sure,” Milly said, “But I’ll be able to tell you in a few minutes, I think.” She went back to kneading, and eventually, the rest of them went back to their stations, Liv grumbling about keeping secrets as they went back to chopping.

It was actually more like a few hours later than Chef Eliot came back down the stairs, looking distinctly ruffled, although she couldn’t quite pinpoint why. He came back to her station and looked over her shoulder, presumably to see how the bread was coming and she shot him a smile that she hoped communicated, ‘I am a diligent worker and you should not fire me for impertinence!’

He started walking away and then paused, looking back at her. “Thanks,” he mumbled, ears turning a slight pink.

She grinned. “Anytime, Chef.”

As he walked away, she thought she heard something about 'bechamel sauce', and she laughed as she turned back to her work.


End file.
